Not entirely sure I'm up for forking out £20 on material I already have, especially as behind the scenes stuff will bleed into the Waki, Transformation, etc. and probably actually isn't all that interesting, especially as the guy with a habit of revising history to make himself look more awesome is editing.

One of those odd things that's only of interest to people who already have most of it; really think the nostalgia will fade once you're talking a tenner a copy. Trust me, I have the good fortune to work with people who order the bloody things.

Wouldn't actually be surprised if this one doesn't make it past regional; it's usually about the third issue that people start doing the maths and work out how much their subscription is likely to actually cost versus rounding up the Titan trades; the main reason the Marvel one got through was that a fair percentage of the books reprinted aren't actually dirt cheap in other formats whereas there are Forbidden Planets out there using copies of Showdown as coasters.

It does seem a surprising one to go for, I suppose it depends how much residual fondness there is for the comics outside the traditional fandom. Presumably, unless they're insane, a full launch should tie into the next film in June so we won't know for a while.

Mind, the Trek one's website is still up and letting you take orders despite the four issue trial now presumably being over, but they've missed the really obvious attention grabbing launch point of the 50th.

T2006 will do brisk business, especially if they're really smart and bundle either the IDW film adaptation or a DVD copy of the film in for a first issue freebie. But you're not going to get much nostalgia appeal in War Within or Stormbringer; personally think they should have picked either IDW or Marvel, not sure how many people who casually read the weekly thirty years ago are going to be much other than baffled by new comics which have nothing to do with the old.

WW is especially baffling - an unfinished prequel to unfinished stories which will probably be skipped seems more like the editor trying to do the writer a favour by putting some royalties his way in a big-selling early issue.

It's a bit of a shame as an Ultimate TF UK book just covering the Marvel stuff with some common sense stuff like annuals, G2, full colour US reprints, dumping Earthforce in one solid block at the end and maaaaybe finding money to at least finish off colouring Raiders would be tempting and if done in a similar way to the Titan stuff but with the UK material integrated (start off with big epic Unicron stuff and then G2 before looping around to the dodgy early material when the subs are in would have actually been pretty tempting and probably more likely to ensnare.

Transformers still isn't hugely remembered as a comic title here either; the cartoon seems to have imprinted a lot harder considering its' spotty showings.

I can see the logic of doing The Origin of Optimus Prime as one of the early ones, though equally there's a couple of IDW stories that could equally fit the bill (either one from the writer of Transformers The Movie or even the pretty damn awesome Chaos Theory if they wanted to show the real start of his journey). I think WW I is fairly standalone as well though isn't it?

Doing it and Stormbringer in the test run was probably a mistake though. Something more recent would have made more sense to give a good cross sample of everything being offered.

A lot of people do seem to want just a Marvel one, and I wonder if that'll undo it. Would the 20ish issues that'd take be too small for a part work? I can certainly see a lot of people picking and chosing just those if it goes beyond the trial.

And speaking of the trial, I assumed this announcement was for something forthcoming, but the TFW thread has an inhand pic of the T:2006 book, so it's out in the test area already (though they don't say where the test area is!).

Sadly the thread has mostly been taken over by someone very angry at the term "Generation One" being used for anything other than the Marvel comics because OBVIOUSLY GENERATION ONE ENDED WHEN GENERATION 2 STARTED, THAT'S HOW GENERATIONS WORK DUH.

I'm still not sure how there's that many books between War Within and Stormbringer so you never know...

War Within's v28 and Stormbringer's v35, yeah?

v29 The Dark Ages / whatever there is of Age of Wrath
v30 the first DW mini
v31 War & Peace
v32-33 DW's ongoing/Micromasters
v34 Infiltration? Or whatever the hell they do for sequencing the IDW flashback stuff. Megatron Origin? Who the **** knows.

Even though the Cover to Issue Two is Stormbringer, directly underneath they've boldly given it the title 'STORMBRIDGE'.

This truly is the all out civil war between the Heroic Autobots and Evil Deceptions.

I dread the "remastered" part if it's gonna bring us another profile of Streetwise "dutitutty reoording" the most seemingly insignificant details.

Or "fixing" purple Soundwave. Why does that need "fixing" anyway? Is presenting the comics as originally printed that much of a bad thing? I'm not asking them to print it on crappy paper too, but this is the kind of mentality that gives us a Predator blu-ray where everyone and everything looks like they're made of plastic.

After an initially odd email exchange (something seemed to get lost in their first reply as it was just one lower case nonsensical sentence) I got a reply to my arm chancing request for an interview about the book that said they won't be looking into any promotional stuff for 2-3 months. So it looks like a post-Christmas launch if the test does well enough.

People who subscribed are starting to get the first two issues apparently.

As I was in Manchester for a wedding and I thought it would make a good Christmas Quiz prize I picked up the second issue over the weekend. Probably the least interesting of the test issues in terms of content (all off the shelf IDW stuff that doesn't give much of an indication of how they'll handle archival stuff), but the book itself really is a nice chunky hardback. If they sort out the spine art and the some design niggles (wrong endpieces being the big one here) this could be quite a good collection.

Based on how many copies they had a week after it came out I'd suspect it's not going well enough to go nationwide though.

My sub finally arrived! Turned out they hadn't written the flat number on the address so it's spent a week under a postman's arm with him wandering the block knocking on random doors (I'd entered it properly on the site though).

The T: 2006 book is indeed lovely and looks so good as a chunky hardback. It's a bit unfair on Stormbringer but seeing all that old stuff presented like this is going to get you in the gut far more.

Though if it doesn't get to series/you only want this first one the American content will seem a bit random. And the behind the scenes stuff is shamelessly just UK focused, anyone wanting insight into Arielbots Over America will be sad.

And with the trial now over (though it looks like a lot of subscribers--myself included, didn't get the full run due to demand exceeding the printing. No one was charged for anything yet, but it'd be nice if these things were made clear when signing up...) apparently it's showing up in Diamond solicitations for the new year.